Virtual Heart Break

This video is quite funny and pertinent to my ongoing discussion about emotions experienced in RL vs. virtual environments.

"If This is Second Life Why is My Heart Breaking in Real Life"



I love that the women speak in TTS (text-to-speech). I guess now that SL is going to allow voice-communication, audiences may expect more expressive voice-acting in such videos - perhaps in real-time SL as well. I wonder if someone will offer voice-filters to maintain some of the anonymity afforded by texting.

But back to the main point - these women are heartbroken - in real and second life! But what if this were a para-authentic event (i.e., the same people who were dating in SL were dating in RL)? What if this guy was two (three)-timing these women in RL and SL? They would be even more heart-broken, right? What if he were faithful in RL but cheating in SL? I think they would be less heart-broken than in the previous condition. Now, what if he were faithful in SL but cheating in RL? Would his faithfulness in SL even matter? Probably not - unless the women ascribed more importance to their SL than RL relationships. This is not such a profound assertion, but perhaps it will lead to some better thoughts later. For now, it leads me back to my sea of email - the tides are rising, I'm hypothesizing.

Wheelies - In Second Life, not on motorcycle

This is a great story about a dance club in SL for RL disabled people to kick it, literally ...hmmm, well, at least virtually ;).



This brings me back to the question of whether emotions experienced in virtual spaces can be more intense or important than those experienced in RL. Perhaps we experience emotions during para-authentic virtual events - virtual events which have RL corollaries (e.g., my virtual motorcycle) - differently than we experience emotions during completely artificial virtual events. This seems obvious - someone who doesn't have a motorcycle in RL experiences a virtual motorcycle in a very different way than I do. Do they love it more or less than I do?

The more salient question is how the disabled person who tends to avoid RL dance clubs feels in the virtual dance club. It seems obvious that they enjoy it more than RL dance clubs. But if they don't go to RL dance clubs, then is the virtual dance club a para-authentic or artificial virtual event. Further, do they enjoy the virtual dance club more or less than I do?

More thoughts for the eventual dissertation? I have a feeling that if I contemplated this for awhile longer I could come up with a theoretical framework to organize how we experience emotion in virtual environments depending on whether it is an artificial or para-authentic event. But I've got more short-term thinking to get back to.

----UPDATE----
After reading this posting, Simon sent me an email saying he doesn't like RL dance clubs but dancing in SL makes him feel great. He also offered me an interview, which I will most likely follow up on when I have an official (IRB sanctioned) research project.

From SL pic sharing - to - I want to work at LL!!

Snapzilla, a website for sharing photos from Second Life, is one of the many cool things I learned about during my interview at Linden Lab this Monday. Why would they give an internship to someone as clearly ignorant about SL as I am? Well, I'm an overworked PhD student with a passion for the metaverse. Although I don't spend much time in it, I have faith that metaverse will make the real world a better place. But doesn't that mean I have blind faith? Well, I would argue that faith must be blind in some regard in order to be faith at all. Anyway, I promised I'd read some blogs and spend more time in-world before my start date - if I am fortunate enough to have a start date.

The expanding metaverse

How could I have started a tech blog and not yet posted about Second Life (which has been my significant research interest for the past few months)!? Perhaps I've been too focused on SL to think of it as something new.

Regardless, the metaverse is expanding. Recently, Linden Lab has open-sourced the SL client code. As the metaverse becomes increasingly similar to the internet, will the internet start feeling like using the dewey decimal system?

This move makes SL even more user-creatable, kind of like the irobot create. I wonder if I could get link an irobot create to my SL avatar...

Official posting here:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/08/embracing-the-inevitable/

Good synopsis article here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/08/second-life-goes-open-source-should-it-be-non-profit-too/


In related but slightly older news, google will be jumping into the metaverse as well (surprised?). Cory Ondrejka, CTO and early developer of SL, has written about the inevitable need for interoperability between virtual worlds. The open-source SL client makes this possible ...or Google could just buy them for a billion.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/11/technology/business2_futureboy_0511/index.htm


Last and probably least, here's a cool article about how companies should approach using Second Life to market their products.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/13152.asp